MiCA’s transition period closed on 1 July 2026, and EU crypto companies without CASP authorisation can no longer legally serve clients until they get one. The CASP register lists 17 licenses across the three countries so far, all drawing from the same small circle of board members, MLROs, and AML leads, a circle small enough that everyone already knows everyone else.
As Anastasia Zencika, Founder & CEO of Evotym – fintech recruitment agency, said in an interview at UN:BLOCK in Riga: “Almost every company getting a MiCA license in Latvia needs an MLRO who is Latvian speaking and based in Latvia. But Latvia simply doesn’t have that many candidates experienced in both fintech and AML who fit that profile, and most companies want crypto experience on top of that.”
So where are companies actually finding these people?
Traditional banking and payments.
As Anna Hroza, Executive Search Consultant & Talent Acquisition Partner at Evotym, mentions: “The challenge for crypto companies is not just access to this talent. It’s creating conditions where experienced professionals from traditional finance can see a clear, credible path forward.”
Crypto hasn’t had a regulated environment long enough to produce many candidates with real board experience yet. Someone who spent a decade in banking already knows how to build a defensible governance structure and sit through a fit-and-proper interview. Learning the crypto side is comparatively quick. Building trust with a regulator from scratch takes years.
Neighbouring Baltic countries.
Lithuania is the clearest example here: its fintech talent pool has roughly doubled over the past 5 years, as an earlier wave of licensing matured into a deeper compliance workforce. The Lithuanian regulator’s own requirements have tightened since then, and getting a license there today takes considerably more time and preparation than it used to.
That’s why some professionals are now considering roles in Latvia and Estonia as new licenses create demand there. This works differently role by role – for example, roles like MLRO or compliance officer mostly require someone local, so relocation isn’t an option there. Board and executive roles are far more open to candidates moving in from elsewhere in the region.
Three things help companies fill MiCA roles faster
Finding candidates is only half the job. In one recent search for a board member across two Baltic jurisdictions, the real bottleneck turned out to be conflicts of interest. Many of the strongest local candidates were already board members or executives at other regulated companies, and got ruled out on those grounds before the conversation even started. In a region this small, conflict-of-interest checks eliminate more names than the actual skills gap does.
That search left 3 clear takeaways for closing roles like this faster:
- Mapping board candidates before the license application goes in. If a strong candidate gets ruled out on conflict-of-interest grounds once the regulator is already reviewing your file, there’s no time left to find a replacement.
- Building trust before the job is guaranteed. To submit a MiCA application, a company needs a candidate to confirm they will take the role once the license is granted. That’s a loose commitment, not a real job offer, and senior compliance professionals know the difference. Strong employer branding helps here: candidates need to see clearly where they’d fit and what growth looks like, for themselves and for the company. They also need honesty about where the license process currently stands, and what happens if it doesn’t come through at all. No one wants to sign up for a story that ends with no license, no job, and a dented reputation. A vague reassurance loses candidates quicker than a direct answer to that question.
- Checking a candidate’s profile with the regulator before the formal submission. Regulators are often more open to discussing edge cases than companies assume, and a background outside crypto is rarely the dealbreaker it first appears to be. Finding that out early saves a search from restarting months in.
None of this makes the shortage disappear on its own. It decides who fills these roles before deadline pressure hits, and who’s still searching. Lithuania’s compliance bench took years to build. Latvia and Estonia are still building theirs.
